Last Tuesday night I jumped into the Cat 1/2/3 Tuesday Night Criterium at the MN State Fair and used three GoPro cameras to cover the action. Did it take more energy to race or to produce this video? It was close, but similar to racing, efficiency will come with time in video production. Here is a quick breakdown of steps that took this from idea to YouTube.

Film the race. I shot everything in Protunes since I edit the color in post using Adobe Premier CC.

Drag all of the video files and my Garmin FIT file into a common file on my hard drive.

Produce my data overlay in Garmin’s Virb Edit program. I find it easier to produce it on a blue screen and bring it into Premier as a separate layer to give me more control over quality.

Rename all of the files in the common folder so I can stay organized.

Import all of the video files into Adobe Premier CC.

Drag the racing videos onto individual tracks and sync and nest the footage. Thanks to the Race Official’s whistle, this part is pretty easy.

Correct the color manually and then apply a color LUT from Ground Control. This is why I shoot in Protunes, but I’m still not that great at achieving the best look. This is by far the most difficult step to get right.

Use Premier’s “multi cam” feature to watch the race while selecting “Camera One,” “Camera Two,” or “Camera Three.” This is a great feature, but a huge resource hog. I work on a “fast” computer, but I still need to flatten the videos a few times to get the preview window running smoothly.

Add the Garmin Virb overlay with my data to the tracking group and remove the blue-screen using a “keying” effect.

Render and export this video. I could continue editing this project, but I thought it was better to free up some computer resources.

Watch the produced video while narrating on a separate recording device.

Start the “final video” project in Adobe Premier CC by bringing in my narration file, the synced footage, my personal logo, and a music track.